“Link,” said Jack; and as he stuck out his elbow again in an unmistakable fashion, I took his arm.
“We call that linking, in these parts,” said Jack. “Good-evening, Mrs. Loxley. Good-evening, Peter. Thank you, thank you. I’m very glad to get home too—I should think not!” These sentences were replies to the warm greetings Jack received from the cottage-doors; the last to the remark, “You don’t find a many places to beat t’ould one, sir, I expect!”
“I’m very popular in the village,” said my eccentric companion, with a sigh, as we turned into the drive. “Though I say it that shouldn’t, you think? Well! Ita vita. Such is life’s half circle. Do you know Leadbetter? That’s the way he construed it.”
“I know you all talk in riddles,” said I.
“Well, never mind; you’ll know Leadbetter, and all the old books in the house by and by. Plenty of ’em, aren’t there? The governor had a curate once, when his throat was bad. He said it was an Entertaining Library of Useless Knowledge. I’ve brought home one more volume to add to it. Second prize for chemistry. Only three fellows went in for it; which you needn’t allude to at head-quarters;” and he sighed again.
As we passed slowly under the shadow of the heavy foliage, Jack, like Eleanor, put up his left arm to drag down a bunch of roses. They were further advanced now, and the shower of rose-leaves fell thickly like snowflakes over us—over Jack and me, and Neddy and the carriage, with the hat-box on the driving seat. We must have looked very queer, I think, as we came up out of the overshadowed road, like dwarfs out of a fairy tale, covered with flowers, and leading our carriage with its odd occupant inside.
Keziah, who had been counting the days to the holidays, ran down first to meet us, beaming with pleasure; though when Jack, in the futile attempt to play leap-frog with her against her will, damaged her cap, and clung to her neck till I thought she would have been throttled, she indignantly declared that, “Now the young gentlemen was home there was an end of peace for everybody, choose who they might be.”